Good morning all! Julie here, bringing you a couple of unbelievably cute crocodile cards by Norine Borys. She used the newest stamps and matching dies from the Animal House collection. Take it away Norine!

Hi friends, it’s Norine back with you today, sharing a couple of cards made using the May Animal House stamp and die sets, called Alligators and Crocodiles. First up is a cute birthday card!

To emphasize the numerical aspect of a birthday, I also used the By the Numbers crafting die. I began by stamping the Croco/Gator image onto Strathmore Bristol Smooth cardstock with Versafine Onyx black ink - an ink that is watercolor friendly, and then coloring the images with Arteza Real Brush watercolor markers, and blending the colors with a water brush. I used the coordinating Alligator & Crocodile dies to cut the crocodile and bird shapes and set them aside.

Next, I die cut a panel of white cardstock with the By The Numbers die and adhered it to the front of a white cardstock card base. I love to use over-all die cuts like this to support the theme of my card as well as to provide some interest without being distracting, so that the images and sentiment can have the attention. I used Versamark ink to stamp a sentiment onto black cardstock, heat embossed with white embossing powder and cut out the sentiment block, then backed it with foam tape to pop it up on the card front.

Finally, I adhered the die-cut crocodile accent, with his big toothy grin, to the card front, adding one of the die-cut flamingos to his back, safely away from those teeth! I’m kidding, these two are the best of friends! The addition of a few coordinating enamel dots (I never get tired of those!) completes the card!

My second card is a fun “hey, how’ve you been?” card. I started by ink blending onto an A2 sized white cardstock card panel with a wave stencil and some blue Tim Holtz Distress ink.

Following the lines at the top, I hand cut the stenciled portion about 1/4th of the way down. I used a piece of green patterned paper for the background and adhered it to a card base.

Next, I stamped an alliga-dile (sorry, I don’t actually know the difference well enough to know which I made) onto Bristol Smooth card stock with Versafine ink, and colored again with water-based real brush markers before die cutting with the coordinating dies. Before adhering the water portion of the card panel to the card base, I tucked the alliga-dile under the edge to appear like he’s menacingly peeking out, although the little bird sitting on his back totally gives him away!

I stamped the sentiment directly onto the stenciled cardstock with black ink. I found some blue glitter enamel dots in my stash that made me think of water bubbles so I used them and some yellow dots (to tie in with the yellow bird) to complete this card.